


1:30 in the Morning, on a Tuesday

by drpepperdiva91



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Pining!John, Pining!Sherlock, Post-Season/Series 03, Sad, Sappy, Tumblr Prompt, but there is a happy ending, terribly depressing really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 09:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2144883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drpepperdiva91/pseuds/drpepperdiva91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John's life falls apart again, Sherlock tries to turn his heart to stone, and no one can stop the inevitable.</p><p>Because all lives end. All hearts are broken. And caring is not an advantage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Your's

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt (from tomatomaster on tumblr):
> 
> "no but imagine john moving back into 221b after his breakup with mary and sherlock tries to avoid him because he knows that mycroft was right with the whole “caring is not an advantage” thing so he solves cases alone and doesn’t come home at night and john is even more heartbroken because he thinks sherlock replaced him in his absence"

John knew it was over, months ago, _before Christmas really_ , he thinks, when he's honest with himself. Before he'd tried to forgive her, before he'd tried to forgive himself for not being able to forgive her, before he knew the baby wasn't his.

He knew it was over from the moment Mary pointed a gun at him, thinking he was Sherlock. Intellectually, logically, he knew that he wouldn't be able to make it work. Any therapist could have told him that. Trust issues.

The problem was that his heart paid no mind to the trust issues. So he'd tried to forgive her, at Christmas, months ago. He'd failed, and then tried to forgive himself for failing. That was weeks ago. Now, finally, a straw to break the back of the camel that had been begging for death: the baby. The baby wasn't his, the test had just come back this morning, and now he knew, finally, that he would have to give up. He would have to give up on the women he thought he knew, the woman he thought he married, the woman he thought had carried him through the grief of losing his closest friend and deepest love, the woman he thought was going to be the mother of a child that he thought was his.

Luckily for John, the web of lies that currently made up his life included one lie that he had genuinely asked for. He'd asked Sherlock to stop being dead, and Sherlock, being the great lying git he is, did just that. Which is why, at 1:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, John found himself standing just outside the doorway of 221B, looking in at Sherlock, who appeared to be playing his violin while sitting upside-down on the sofa.

Sherlock quirked one eye open, looking John up and down disinterestedly.  _Have fun not getting involved, Sherlock_ , Mycroft's voice chided him in his head.  _Not_ getting _involved, Mycroft. I already_ am _involved,_  he corrected himself and his inner Mycroft.  _I'm already involved, and I've just got to stem the collateral damage. All hearts are broken, after all._ _  
_

"No your's?" He asked, resuming the concerto he'd been focusing on before he heard John's heavy footfalls on the stairs.

"Nope," John returned, smacking his lips on the 'p' sound.

"I told you."

"Yeah, well. Happy?"

Sherlock stopped playing again, looking at John with both eyes this time.  _I could never be happy, seeing the pain written all over your face._ "Caring is not an advantage, John. But you do know I enjoy being right."

John dropped his overnight pack roughly by the door, crossed the room briskly, and fell heavily into his customary chair. Bending forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and his forehead in the palm of his hands, he took a deep breath in through his nose and blew it out through pursed lips. He then sat up a little straighter, shook his head slightly, and smiled at Sherlock with a classic furious-John-Watson-smile. 

"Could you maybe, possibly, consider trying not being a complete and utter cock for one night? No, scratch that. An hour? Just one fucking hour, Sherlock, when your best friend shows up on your doorstep in the middle of the night because he's nowhere else to go, because he's leaving his wife, because everyone,  _everyone he ever loves_ , lies to him? Could you try that?"  _Sherlock, I have no one left, but you. No one. You lied to me, but you came back. You came back, after I asked you to, after I begged you to at your grave, and now you're all that's left._

"John, you know you're always welcome here, but I'm not going to pretend to know anything about something as mundane as  _comforting_ people,"  _I can't do this again, John. We can't do this. It's dangerous and volatile. It's hurting us both, and there's no reason for_ _it._

John cleared his throat, stretched thin over an emotional crevice between the ledges of anger and heartbreak. "Right then. You enjoy being right. I've got to go to the clinic in the morning," he said, before picking up his bag and slowly climbing the stairs to his old bedroom.

 


	2. Not Me

The days came and went, after that first tense night. Things didn't quite return to the baseline that John and Sherlock had come to know as normal, before the fall and before Mary. John's blog sat stagnant and empty, another wasted jumble of HTML cluttering up cyberspace, while Sherlock went on cases at all hours of the day and night without him. The second day, John had asked if Sherlock wanted him to come along.

"I work alone, now. Maybe you should request more clinic hours."

John regretted asking. It wasn't the fact that he wasn't  _wanted_ that bothered him, precisely. Even before, Sherlock didn't seem to  _want_ someone tagging along on cases with him, but he had needed an assistant, at least, that's what he'd told John. But now, after the years apart spent, Sherlock dismantling terrorist organizations, doing god-knows-what, in god-knows-where, John felt distinctly _unneeded._ Sherlock was famous, and didn't need the PR that John's blog had brought him in the early days of their friendship.  _He doesn't need me. He probably never did._

_No one, really, needs me._

_Have I always been this naive?_

John didn't bother answering his own question. He didn't want to know the answer.

It wasn't the same, certainly, and there was definitely a hushed undertone of tension about the flat whenever both men were in the same room together, but things were about as close to normal as anyone could expect they would be, living with Sherlock. John still endured the body parts in the cookware, still made tea religiously, and still watched crap telly after clinic hours. Much to John's surprise, Sherlock was absent the majority of the time the doctor spent in the flat. After the first week, it became apparent that Sherlock was doing more than simply taking more cases than he used to- he wasn't coming home at all. 

Staying out chasing murderers until the wee hours of the morning had been something that Sherlock was accustomed to doing occasionally. Given the man's propensity to stay awake for three days at a time while working, fueling his body with caffeine, nicotine, and adrenaline, this wasn't particularly unusual. But when John realized that Sherlock was staying out of the flat five out of seven nights a week- and even Sherlock can't stay awake for five days at a time, locked-door murder or no- he had to force himself to come to the only other possible conclusion.

Sherlock was sleeping somewhere else.

_Where? What is he doing this for? Not a case, surely, he would have mentioned something about it to me. He's out there, sleeping in someone else's flat. Oh. Oh, God, he's found someone and doesn't want to flaunt it in front of me, the flatmate in the middle of a messy divorce. He's found someone._

_He's found someone._

_And it's not me._


	3. Always You

After coming to the conclusion that Sherlock was, indeed, in a relationship and spending the majority of his time at this mystery lover's home, John's steadfast refusal to give in to his depression started to crumble.  _He doesn't even want to be around me any more,_ John thought, bitterly.  _He can't even tell me he's with someone. Some friendship this is. I've lost a wife, and a child, and best friend in less than a year. And I'd just got him back. Christ, when I first came back here I thought, maybe, with Mary finally out of the picture..._

_No. Don't even go there, Watson. It's never going to happen, you've royally fucked everything up, again, just like you always have. You were lucky he was even your friend to begin with._

_You're lucky he's letting you stay here._

John let his hours at the clinic dwindle each week, until about a month later, he was barely making it in one day a week. The rest of the time, he could scarcely convince his body to carry him out of bed and downstairs, on a good day. Sherlock, still doing everything he could to avoid the confrontation that he knew, in his bones, was coming, took no notice. He was hardly ever at the flat, instead staying in Mycroft's guest house. Without permission, of course- he picked the lock and disarmed the security system rather than ask his brother for help, or let on that anything was amiss in his personal life.

One night, drained after a case and unwilling to travel back out to Mycroft's, Sherlock labored up the stairs, expecting John to be in bed. It was around three in the morning, after all, and he usually went to the clinic around seven. It was highly unlikely that he'd be up at this hour, barring a nightmare or some other unforeseen circumstance.

It can go without saying that Sherlock was taken by surprise when he entered his flat for the first time in several days, to find John curled into himself on the sofa, audibly crying, wearing pajamas that Sherlock estimated had been on his body for the past 67 hours. In a matter of seconds, Sherlock ran through the few times he'd seen the man cry. 

The first had been the night they had rushed Harry to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. She drunkenly forced her way into their flat while they were out on a case, downed a bottle of scotch that Sherlock had stolen from Mycroft several years prior, and subsequently passed out and nearly asphyxiated on her own vomit. John reestablished her airway while Sherlock called the paramedics. After  she'd been admitted, and John had spoken with her doctor, they took their leave. Sherlock flagged down a taxi, and John promptly buried his face in his palms, silently sobbing the entire way back to Baker Street. They never spoke of it, but Sherlock did make the tea the next morning.

The second time was at Sherlock's own grave. Thinking of John's words that day still sent a chill running down Sherlock's spine.  _I caused that pain; those tears. I'm so sorry John. There was no other way._

The third was at John and Mary's wedding, when they were reciting their vows. He'd deleted the words, but would never forget the look on John's face. He wasn't sure if he'd ever seen a happier man.  _Sometimes, it feels like we've all aged a decade since that day, even though it was hardly a year ago._

And now, in front of him, the fourth. John clearly hadn't heard Sherlock come up the stairs, so Sherlock cleared his throat loudly, before crossing the room to sit on the floor, close to where John's head was resting on the sofa. John sat up, abruptly, furiously scrubbing a hand over his face and gulping in a few mouthfuls of air.

"Sherlock, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd be coming home, I'll- I'll go upstairs, sorry, this is- this is embarrassing. Just- just delete it or, whatever it is you do," John said, as he moved to get up.

"No, John, what's happened? Tell me what's going on," Sherlock said, placing his hands on John's shoulders to keep him from standing.

"It's nothing, Sherlock. Nothing's happened," John said, hiding his face in his hands.

"John, this is the fourth time I have seen you cry, and none of the three previous incidents have given me reason to believe that you're the type to shed tears over 'nothing.'" _  
_

"I just... you were... Christ, can't you just deduce it? I can't. I can't talk about this. We're not having this conversation, not when you've just come back from whoever you've been spending all your time with, no, I'm not-"

"I haven't been spending my time with anyone, John. What are you talking about?"

"The where the hell have you been sleeping?"

"Mycroft's guest house. I broke in. Nice accommodations, actually."

"Mycroft's... why? You live here, Sherlock. If I make you that uncomfortable, I'll just find somewhere-"

"No! John, no, that's not at all what this is about."

"Then what the bloody hell  _is_ it about, Sherlock? I've been here for weeks, missing you almost as badly as I did when you were dead. You came back, you said you came back because  _you heard me_ ask you to. But for what? For this? I don't know what I've done, but if I've lost you again, I've got nothing left. You act like you have no emotions, but I  _know you_. I know you feel just like the rest of us mortals, but why are you doing this to me? Giving me the cold shoulder for weeks now, and I just can't- I don't- please, I can't take this. I'm not- no, I-" John cut himself off, surrendering to the vice that seemed to be gripping his chest and throat. His sobs came out choked and raw, and Sherlock couldn't think of anything above his overwhelming instinct to pull John clear off the couch and into his arms. He felt the doctor grip him tightly, pressing his face into his neck, hot tears trailing down his trapezius muscle and into the collar of his shirt. 

_Caring may not be an advantage, but if this is what lack of caring does to John Watson, it may very well be something we can't do without._

After several minutes, John calmed enough to regulate his breathing, and Sherlock felt it was safe to speak, although his grip on John was tight and unwavering. 

"John, I'm not entirely sure how this should go," he began, nervous but resolute. "But it appears I've made an error. I've never been one for sentiment, as you well know, but after your marriage... After you married Mary, I convinced myself that my forays into the world of caring were over. I thought that I could get by without it, but I never imagined the toll that decision would take on you, and on our friendship. I care for you very much, John, you know that. I told you, and a room full of people, on your wedding day that I love you. That's never changed. Never, John. It's always you. But, when you came back here, I was afraid of what might happen, if I allowed myself the luxury of indulging in those emotions. We've both been hurt, John, and I seem to be the one that's dealt a lot of the blows. This is not at all what I wanted to happen. Don't ever think you've lost me. I'm so sorry, I've tried to keep both of us from hurting, and just made everything worse. I'm sorry. I'll stop. This was clearly a bit not good."

John shook his head, incredulously, but made no move to remove himself from the detective's hold. 

"So, basically, what you're telling me is this is Mycroft's fault? 'All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage,'" John asked, his impression of Mycroft bringing a shadow of a smile to Sherlock's lips.

"Not exactly, but I'm happy to blame it on him if you'd like," Sherlock answered, pulling John closer and resting his cheek on the crown of his head. 

John nodded in agreement, reveling in the comforting feeling of Sherlock's face resting in his hair and arms around his shoulders.

 _Caring is certainly not an advantage,_ Sherlock thought to himself, happy to hold John as long as the man would allow it.  _Not an advantage against death, or heartbreak. It's much more than that. Caring is what gives meaning and purpose to every relationship we have. The cause of the pain we feel when a loved one dies, the power we give to someone who breaks our heart, and the only thing that can sustain us through either ordeal. All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage- caring is a necessity._


End file.
